The Art
of Lossless
Data Compression
vol. 21t

Here are the results of tests performed in September 2000 to compare
lossless compression of english texts by all known good enough programs
developed for such purpose, including RK, DC, YBS, Bzip2, IMP, RAR and 7-zip.
See Archive Comparison Test by J.Gilchrist for more details: http://act.by.net
If anybody wants to start or continue such tests,
or can suggest some other sets of texts, or other compression programs,
(not sources or algorithm descriptions, executable programs only)
or knows we have missed something important,
(some new fantastic technology, an algorithm or even a program capable
of lossless compression of up to 1000:1 etc.)
please let us know immediately: artest@inbox.ru Thank you!

What's new:

Newer versions of programs are ready, they will be tested next time: RK, SBC,
ZZip, ACE, UFA, 7-zip, PkzipC, RAR32, WinRAR, ERI32, BA, PPMD, PPMonstr, UHARC.
Results of older versions are given. Next release will be ready soon.
Latest beta versions of BEE, DC, UFA, UHArc are available
from authors by e-mail request:
BEE: Andrew.Filinsky@p11.f4.n452.z2.fidonet.org
DC: EdgarBinder@t-online.de
UFA: support@7-zip.com
UHARC: Uwe.Herklotz@gmx.de
ACB, UHArc 0.2 and PKzip are not tested on all 556 text files any more,
their results can be found in previous versions:
ACB - ARTest17
UHArc - ARTest17
PKzip - ARTest17,18
Results of PPMD (an open source version of PPMonstr)
are in full version only, TEXTS.DAT file,
UFA 0.04b1 performs on text files exactly as 777 0.04b1.
Results of old programs (not updated for more than 3 years, and no homepage),
programs with low overall score will not be put to latest versions of ARTest.
And also results of programs that are known to have bugs
(in compression/decompression functions) for more than half a year.

WARNINGS:

BA 1.00beta can't decompress any file compressed with -mf , and says nothing
like "CRC fails".
DC 0.99.158b failed to decompress 1DFRE10.dc , ANDES10.dc , and BTI0110.dc,
saying "Corrupted block" (while t(est) command writes "Test successful").
RK 1.03b1 was unable to correctly decompress 555 files (all except E.TXT)
compressed with "-mx3 -ft-", reporting
ERROR 303: CRC check failed.
ERI32 4.8fre can't compress files larger than (free DPMI memory)/6, i.e.
about 10Mb on a PC with 64Mb RAM. The largest 44Mb file was split to 5 chunks
9000000 bytes long (last chunk was 8894190 bytes).
Bugs in tested versions of SBC and ZZip were found,
but they are removed from latest versions ZZip 0.36b and SBC 0.840b .
Problems in all other compressors were not found.
The LATEST RELEASE, and all previous versions of these tests can be found
at http://geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/1995/ and http://artest1.tripod.com/
Send your suggestions, comments to artest@hotmail.ru
With best kind regards,
A.Ratushnyak
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